Grooming Secrets of the NBA

NBA players are some of the most stylish athletes competing today, but what's not as obvious is the considerable attention they pay to their grooming routines. Elizabeth Holmes has an inside look at how the pros keep their skin looking lovely. Photo: Getty Images.

DeAndre Jordan is a 6-foot-11, 265-pound pro basketball player for the Los Angeles Clippers—and you'll never guess what kind of deodorant he puts on before a game.

"I use Secret," says Mr. Jordan. The 25-year-old Texan prefers the aerosol form of the product marketed to women because, he says, it is light and doesn't leave behind any visible white residue. "I'm always powder-fresh during the games," he adds. "I'm sure my opponents love that."

Many members of the National Basketball Association are known for their stylish wardrobes. Players regularly appear front row at fashion shows. What's less obvious is the considerable attention men in the league pay to their grooming routines. Many are devoted to particular products and have devised specific hair and skin-care regimens tailored to their sweat-laden and shower-heavy lifestyle. Salon services, including manicures and pedicures, are commonplace.

"Every year I will stock my locker up with body wash, different lotions, different oils and different creams," says Amar'e Stoudemire, a fashion-forward forward with the New York Knicks. Before games, he applies Bath and Body Works Stress Relief eucalyptus-and-spearmint-scented body lotion. Afterward, Mr. Stoudemire, 31, makes sure to wash his face with Dove soap to remove the sweat that pools around the edges of his goggles while playing.

The added care fits with the (quite literal) exposure that basketball players have while competing. Unlike other sports, where a helmet or uniform covers an athlete's face or body, basketball players are on full display during a game. "We're a walking billboard," says Chandler Parsons of the Houston Rockets. "You want to look good to everyone who is watching."

Makers of men's grooming products are catching on and forming relationships with teams and players. Anthony Brands stocks the locker rooms at the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, with hundreds of bottles of its products like glycolic facial cleanser and pre-shave oil.

Dove Men+Care ran an ad campaign earlier this year featuring the Miami Heat's Dwyane Wade, who has been known to share some of his grooming routine with his more than two million Instagram followers. A photo from 2012 displayed the toiletries Mr. Wade packed for an overseas trip, with a trio of products from La Mer, a luxury skin-care line.

Well-known men talking about grooming lend legitimacy to the use of products that might otherwise make men hesitant, says Rob Candelino, vice president of marketing for skin care at Dove Men+Care's parent company, Unilever.UL0.29% "These guys make it OK because they are so iconic and prominent," he says, calling athletes like Mr. Wade "very male and very real."

U.S. sales of men's toiletries, including hair, skin and bath products as well as deodorant, neared $2.9 billion in 2012, almost double the sales of a decade ago, according to market-research firm Euromonitor International.

Many well-groomed NBA players didn't pay attention to their hair or skin before going pro. The Clippers' Mr. Jordan only began getting regular manicures and pedicures when he joined the league five years ago. "My mom told me to do it," he says. "She's like, 'Well, your feet are going to take care of you, so you need to take care of your feet.' "

She took him to a salon for his first manicure and pedicure (without polish) and Mr. Jordan says the women working there laughed at his size-17 feet. Now he has a manicurist come to his home every two weeks or so. "I know why girls go and have their nails done so often and have spa days. It feels awesome," he says.

For 41 regular-season road games, Mr. Jordan brings his own toiletries instead of using products in his hotel bathroom. And then there's the issue of quantity. "They give you the little tubes of soap and I'm a big guy," he says. "I gotta have the full size." At home, Mr. Jordan uses a shampoo and conditioner from Herbal Essences that happens to be pink—"it's a manly pink," he says—and washes his face with a foaming scrub from Neutrogena.

Mr. Jordan cares most about the way he smells. He goes through a lot of deodorant, using products from Speed Stick and Degree, along with his can of Secret for games. "If you don't smell nice before the game, it's going to be pretty bad during and after," he says. Many teammates have their own arsenal of grooming products, Mr. Jordan says, but he does get "a little grief" for using Secret.

Mr. Parsons' Houston Rockets teammates have plenty to say about his look, which the 25-year-old describes as equal parts "pretty boy" and "beach bum from Florida."

"All the guys in the locker room will give me a hard time and call me Robin Thicke or call me Justin Bieber," he says. "I take it as a compliment."

Off the court, Mr. Parsons is best known for his hair, which is carefully sculpted into a peak near his forehead. It's the work of a stylist at the Dolce Vita Salon in Orlando, Fla., which Mr. Parsons first visited several years ago. "I kind of fell in love with it," he says of the style.

ENLARGE

Varejao says of his routine: 'You need to take care of your face and your hair. It's what you show all the time.'
Getty Images

Although the forward showers several times a day, he only washes his hair with shampoo and conditioner a few times a week to avoid drying it out. He uses a combination of two products from Paul Mitchell—a serum and a cream—to mold it into his signature shape.

Mr. Parsons also contends with acne, a common issue for many athletes. "We're sweating, we're bumping into each other, we're touching the basketball that everyone else is touching and then touching our face," he says. "You're definitely more prone to have bacteria break out on your face." His array of face products includes Proactiv, the mail-order three-step system, a Neutrogena cleanser and an oil-free moisturizer.

"I just hate that I still get pimples," says Anderson Varejao, a center with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Mr. Varejao, 31, credits his wife with developing his skin-care routine. He applies Clinique's Dramatically Different moisturizing lotion twice a day, in the morning and after practice, and uses an antioxidant serum from SkinCeuticals called C E Ferulic, priced at $153 a bottle. (For his very curly hair, he uses a curl amplifier by Catwalk.)

The Indiana Pacers' Rasual Butler washes his oily, dry skin with a Clarisonic, a high-end motorized facial-cleansing brush, at the suggestion of an aesthetician. "It helps me really get in there and clean, get a deep cleanse," the 34-year-old swingman says.

Mr. Butler has a twice-daily routine that includes cleanser and toner, and shaving products like Jack Black Beard Lube. He changes the products he uses every few months so his skin doesn't become used to them, a tactic dermatologists often recommend, and gets facials when he can.

ENLARGE

Butler says he tries to switch facial products every three to six months.
AP

Two of Mr. Butler's teammates, Roy Hibbert and George Hill, are fans of the Shea Soufflé moisturizer from a brand called Carol's Daughter. Before a recent game against the New York Knicks, the 7-foot-2 Mr. Hibbert pulled from his backpack a jar in the almond cookie scent. "I put it on after the games whenever I'm ashy," the 26-year-old says. "It just smells really good."

The 27-year-old Mr. Hill, who also likes the line's ecstasy and coconut scents, is drawn to the brand's all-natural ingredients that he says don't dry out his face or body.

"You gotta care about your appearance," Mr. Hill said from the locker room before scoring 23 points against the Knicks. "We always say you're supposed to look on the inside first, but we know that's false. Everyone looks on the outside."

But let's remember also that today Catholics can celebrate Thanksgiving with Christians and Jews, et all - of course the next time such an occasion will arise will be 70,000 years from now ... to the relief, I might add, of the most Devout Catholics ... don't you think.

The Russian Jew artist Chagall has his works of the depiction of Christ the Jew - crucifixions - at the Jewish Museum NYC. Yet, Christ is standing on his own two feet, no blood, nails or ropes ... apparently a kinder Christ: is that a smile on his face?!!!

If the NBA has become known as a style & fashion hub...I think there are three people we can thank for this:

1) REGGIE THEUS: Dude was a decent ballplayer on the court...and stylish about fashion & grooming details off the court.He set the template by which all the NBA "fashion plates" would guide themselves thereafter.

2) PAT RILEY: Armani...Showtime Lakers...hair mousse...'nuff said.

3) DAVID STERN: Took a rudderless league...and turned it into a multi-billion dollar endorsement juggernaut. The guy replacing him need only keep the car on the road...nothing fancy.Gonna miss you,commish.

Who cares? Who cares about the NBA? Seriously I don't know one person who watches this league. Its boring and overpriced. In fact Basketball is on its way out..Extreme Sports is what the young people are into...but the media can't quite accept that since they don't like the skin color of the athletes in those sports..

The NBA, and pro sports in general, just aren't what they used to be. It used to be about competition, sportsmanship, and overcoming adversity. Now it is about money, what they'll be wearing to the post game press conference, how pretty they look... This is why I'm pleased every time a pro league gets locked out or players go on strike. They're all overpaid divas! Hard working middle class families can't even afford to take their kids to these games anymore. The first 20 rows are all full of corporate sponsors. I try to boycott any products licensed by the NBA or NFL or MLB. It started going downhill around the time Charles Barkley announced that he's not a role model. And you can't open the sports section of a newspaper without reading about another pro athlete getting a DUI or getting into a bar fight or cheating on his wife. I still think sports are good. It keeps kids out of trouble and teaches them about winning and most especially about losing, and teamwork, and hard work and practice. But unfortunately, money, gambling, and marketing have ruined pro sports. I just don't get the joy I used to from watching a pro sports game, nor do I think these players are of the caliber that they used to be. Guys like Larry Bird and Michael Jordan from the 80s would destroy these coddled nancy boys in the NBA today. Now the stars all collude and form super teams because they don't have the backbone or maturity to lead a team. The NBA is about five elite teams and the rest don't stand a chance. And the officiating is just terrible and inconsistent. We have a bunch of players faking fouls and flopping around who can't wait to get back to the locker room to put on their facial creme and hair conditioning.

(Sigh) Michael Wiley, you have no idea how much idle time NBA players have. You don't factor in the amount of travel that is involved given that they play 82 games in 5 1/2 months. Also, you really have no idea what players are doing when they have time off because you don't actually know any of them. There are many players that give back to their communities whenever they have ample time. There are countless examples.

Many guys in the NBA have charitable foundations. Many more of them also donate time & money to various causes. A lot more time & money than you ever will. Perhaps you have a problem with them not "saving the world" LOUDLY ENOUGH?

What are you classifying as extreme sports? Also, are you actually a young person? It seems as if you are not and thus don't have that great a grasp of what we are actually into. Yes, "extreme sports," by which I'm assuming you mean MMA, are very popular right now, but that by no means that the NBA is on its way out. As long as basketball is played by a large amount of youth growing up, it will always have a considerable fan base.

There's more than enough "financial pie" to go around. The NBA is not anywhere close to being "on it's way out". The fact that "extreme sports" has an audience...and is growing does not mean that it is doing so at the expense of the NBA.(or other pro sports) Last I checked ...the same media you condemn as being in denial...is out there covering the extreme sports universe in deep detail.Those girls & guys have endorsement deals that would make a lot of established-league ballers jealous. BTW...What is the "skin color" of athletes in extreme sports?

Did you follow the NBA in the 70's, 80's or 90's? There has always been 5-6 good teams and a bunch of also rans. The players have (and have always been) mostly under educated, many time dealing with less than ideal living circumstances throughout their youth. Today's pro athletes fall prey to the same vices that all the athletes before them fell prey to, going back to the beginnings of professional sports. The trend of "I love that guy on the other team because we played AAU together" that permeates the NBA recently is less than ideal. Free agency in MLB and the NFL leads to more fraternization amongst competitors as well, which is still better than the slave like reserve clause.

Nothing has changed except your age and temperament, Mamie - and you sound like a crusty old white guy who is losing perspective.

Well if you want to get technical, the players' union and structure of the collective bargaining agreement isn't purely free market. There's caps and floors on how much the players can make and there's even a bit of socialism regarding how teams' revenue is distributed. But I get what you're saying, the NBA is making plenty of money regardless of whether I like it or not. Happy Thanksgiving!

And you sound like a racist who has a grudge against white people. Go join Oprah, Al SharpTongue, Jesse Jackson, Professor Gates, Barack OWEbama, Eric withHolder, and Jeremiah Wright. The NBA puts out a garbage product and it's whitey's fault? Is that it? Thanks for your excuses and commentary.

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